


Poor Impressions

by MistressOfJam



Series: What Good Is A (love-struck) Fool? [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt, Everyone Needs A Hug, Everyone Needs To Calm Down, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Sad Darth Vader, Sad Luke Skywalker, The Force Is Weird (Star Wars), The Force is Sentient (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:40:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29768742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressOfJam/pseuds/MistressOfJam
Summary: After the disastrous confrontation with his son on Bespin, Vader mulls over the what-nots and could-have-beens, and how Luke’s first impression of him is eternally tarnished.(One shot.)
Relationships: Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader
Series: What Good Is A (love-struck) Fool? [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2183343
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Poor Impressions

Too loud. The voices were too loud.   
  


A cacophony of terror and pain swirled around Vader, the maelstrom opened its trillion mouths and eyes, wavering maddeningly and convulsing in an unknown fit. The whispers, which were once plaintive and mournful, pulled into a single vortex of resembling a body of screaming; bloody, violent and inane screaming, so incoherent, so agonising, yet he knew what it was trying to tell him. They clawed at him, bundling the ends of his cape, scratching at his tinted lenses and every inch of what was him, and he felt a distinct and putrid bitterness seep up to his throat. 

  
He tried to grapple at the Force as he always did, with his iron fist and iron will, wanting to take shelter from it’s own hail of tantrums, and found it melting, slipping from his grasp in sheer disbelief. He reached out boldly into the sea that was the world, and the world _bit_ him — _justlikeyoursondidjustlikeLukejustlikeLukedidjustlikeyourownsonyourson—_ It hammered nails into his heart, and even if not physically, he felt his very heart, soul, (or what was left of it to indicate he was once whole, _human)_ being torn in every direction by the frantic, inconsolable hands and mouths and eyes that glared and clamped around him, intentions in the bite of their screeching.   
  


_(“No, it’s not true! That’s impossible!” And Vader was met with a horrified, appalling shriek of denial at his revelation, as well as a blur of dimming blue eyes and ungodly fury, even if it emanated from a child whom was his own flesh and blood, clinging, grabbing at smooth ends, too smooth, his hand, where did the other go, he did not know, he was shaken, too much, too shaken, his face twisted in pain and he wouldn’t stop crying, couldn’t stop crying and around the end of a walkway, trembling but belligerent.)_

  
Loud, oh, _so_ loud. 

  
Vader barely registered what an officer inquired of him. The sea of madness roared for blood with seething winds, and it pinned the officer off the floor, to a good ten feet away, spluttering. The Sith who was very much trapped in an illustrative trance of his own, and if not, the insanity of the force, which warped his sense of the world, did not even flinch as he suppressed the feeling of bile and the urge to collapse out of the soulful pressure squeezing him through the durasteel suit, wanting him to yield.   
  


The man quite literally stumbled back into his quarters, losing his composure, grace and sense of self all at once.   
  
_  
(And then the child was spiralling, falling and falling into the cylindrical chasm below, plummeting into a staring, blinking world of lights that witnessed his disaster, his weeping cries of anguish that echoed, burning itself into Vader’s mind as he did with his reveal. The fleeing light chased the son of Skywalker in an empathetic, reckless abandon, and all too sudden the Sith felt the world become colder by its own volition, and once again Vader was alone, and secretly mortified.)_

  
Vader pushed himself into the hyperbaric chamber with his last ounce of physical strength, the scrawl of panic and paroxysm disorienting his sight and mind, fogging his connection with the Force.   
  


Or, perhaps, it was flicking his hands away. He could not tell — it was _rejecting_ him, and pushed him away from its essence for once in his life. In addition to this previously unexperienced phenomenon, his heart was burning, and only now, as the chamber hissed closed around him as his last resort for safety, or comfort, or _anything_ to alleviate the unknown constriction around his throat and soul, he looked for the first time in his life as Darth Vader at his gloved hands, and found that they were quivering—

  
No.   
  


—He was trembling all over. 

  
Vader wanted to scream, wrangle someone with his own hands, and destroy a droid simultaneously. _Failure,_ the sea of red whispered, snarling, _you’re a failure._ First, it had been the Jedi Order as a whole. Then Obi-wan who had failed him. Then Padmé, the sun and light of his life since he was a child at Watto’s mechanic shop.   
  


And now, Luke.   
  


Resentment and bitterness washed over him, renewed. “I did not fail them! _They_ have failed _me!_ ” He lashed out to the ghosts dancing tauntingly in his line of sight, even now in his most private space, “We could have had _everything_!” His cape slashed at the segregated walls around him, the step and weight of his black armour deafening in the chamber. Grandeur visions and false promises of him and his family swam around him, elusive and once in a lifetime, but a lie. It had all been nothing, and it swept every friend, comrade and family member he looked upon with affection into the gutter, leaving him in the wind with a flapping token of misery.   
  


_Fool,_ the ghastly voices sneered, mirroring his own venom, translucent, bleeding hands ( _thatsimpossiblethatsnottrue)_ pounding at his head, on the walls, shadowed and visible as they pressed their palms against them, vicious, _You are a fool._  
  


“I have done nothing wrong,” he gritted out, attempting to not recoil or flinch from the increasingly explosive shouting from the Force, as well as the line between reality and the world of dreams, meditation and alike bleeding into one altogether, “I am no fool! I _warned_ him! _I warned him!_ I told him he would be _destroyed!_ ” Why? Why had his son been so foolish? Foolish! So utterly, blindingly stupid! They could have taken down the Emperor! Opportunities! So many, many opportunities for amendment! Lost, all of it! All of _them!_  
  


_(“Oh, oh,” Luke groaned in unfiltered, raw pain at the cauterised wound, a clean circle of flesh and bone haunting him where his trusted, favoured hand had once been, gripping at a lightsaber. He tucked it close to his chest, cradling it with an almost inhuman expression, but one contorted out of agony and fear, his eyes struggling against the bleakness of the ventilator winds just to stare up into the ones that robbed him of his little world of ignorance.)  
  
_

The world became colder, even colder still, bordering temperatures of freezing. Everything in the chamber began to shift and rattle under his extreme bend of rage — an anger so ancient it froze your heart in place instead of adrenaline kicking in your system. 

  
Then, everything _shattered_ under his insistence, under his pain, the only thing he knew, crumbling beneath his feet. The familiar, cracking noise of several _something_ becoming undone, ripped apart from within, providing the slightest of catharsis for him. The voices were wiped into a bed of murmuring tones, plaintive, and the shadows that lingered at the corners of his eyes ceased to exist, banished in his fit of pointed fury. The red sea spilled everywhere, and he knew he was going mad, madder as visions flashed into vivid ( _remember this? remember? do you remember? are you afraid?)_ nightmares that stroked the trauma at the core of his being.   
  
  
Before he could even stop or anticipate it, the scream he had been holding back since _her_ death resounded in the chamber, and he knew he was breaking, becoming man and a failure again, the irony not lost on him. The anger, all too familiar and honed, dispelled, and he recoiled as a whole, the coffin-suit case which was his thread of life at the same time pricking his skin, pushing more and more needles, more and more steel into his bones, into his mind.

  
So much lost....So much time, so many better outcomes...

  
If only his stubborn son had just _taken_ his hand then, at Bespin.....

  
If only he hadn’t sliced off his son’s arm...

  
If only he had been a little more clever...

  
“If only,” Vader whispered softly, a wistful wish not shackled by any sentiment.   
  


He unfurled his fists, the center of the black leather warm, but unwelcome. He lingered in the hunched position for a little longer, his headspace, which was previously brimmed with intricate plans and calculations of every order, sort, kind and priority were flung off the board, and he heaved, panting slightly within the suit, still seething, hissing and unyielding in his self-justified wrath.

  
The voices, hands, eyes and mouths vanished from sight, as did the cold lure of the sea. He glanced down, briefly, and inhaled recoiled a fist at the scattering, almost poetic mural of broken glass reflecting his appearance on the chamber’s floors. They showed him all he knew, all he _could_ know for his entire life: a broken, terrified child, hiding under the facade and mask of something bigger, something which was not him. But everything had converged too thinly: he had crossed an unspeakable line, and now, the shards, jagged and teeth-like, gleamed only blackness: the blackness of the walls, of his suit, and unsurprisingly, of his nature. 

  
He cradled his head in his hands for a few seconds, a bask in a rare moment of emotions he could not sharpen as weapons against his enemies as they sprouted too deeply, too problematic, Sidious said. He shoved that thought at the very back of his head, condemning it beneath the layers of mental barriers — he was the man who did the work. He was allowed to break out of his hold and character, if only..if only for a moment. 

  
_A little moment in time_ , a forgotten voice, one of his own, unused and untouched for a decade, _Is it truly so detestable?_

 _  
It is merely adequate. Control yourself. We have always been detestable,_ the Sith spat back to the man he once was, now severed ( _hishandshishandshishandshishand),_ a distinct and not-part of him. The poignant, sorrowful vestige of himself faded instantly, signalling the last of his own ghosts. 

  
...That was enough. Vader reined in the last of his spilling, shameful emotions and mistakes (this whole ordeal had been one) back into him, into himself, and drew back to full height, the sense of cruelty and apathy filling his being the same way oxygen did with his charred lungs.

  
Back to the drawing board.

**Author's Note:**

> The Force with Luke: oh dear. oh gorgeous :(( 
> 
> The Force with Vader: you fucking donkey. you absolute fool


End file.
